endurance of mental labor, and imprints more deeply on it sensible impressions. Truth, the vital principle of mind, is only to be obtained by the conjoined energy of mind and body. Whatever in practice or theory will unfold truth, or give action to the mind, is a part of education; and so far as literature is instrumental in this, it is valuable. Indeed literature to a certain extent is indispensable. To acquire knowledge by whatever means, and the more systematic the better, is the business of the pupil; to discover truth, the business of the master. All educational systems, which do not tend, by the training of every faculty of mind and body at an early period of life, to make masters of men, not all of one description or occupation, but masters according to talent and capacity, are imperfect. The legitimate tendency of education is to bring men to a level, not to reduce to a low grade true worth, but by bringing out latent energy to elevate the low. The consequence of this will be to throw open, to the use of all, those secrets by which a few have arrived at distinction. Hence the nobility of occupation will be more clearly perceptible, since in some of its forms all must resort to it for a livelihood, contentment, and happiness. Hence too we perceive, that the present common-school system being as yet imperfect is transient, and must give place by modification or revolution to something more in conformity to the wants of man and society. Activity of mind is its most hopeful state, and the more rapid the changes, so that they be not feverish and fitful, the more certain are the indications of progress. Of revolution, with the present efficient officers of the Board, and the present vigilant Secretary, by whom, through its well disciplined district committees and teachers, as through a vital system, every pulsation throughout its entire corporeity is felt, noted, sympathetically heeded, and frankly laid before the public, there is no danger. That all salutary modification will be carefully engrafted upon the system, which will perfect its operation, may be confidently relied upon. The old is constantly giving place to the new or better, and ere long we shall see the work of education, by a due simultaneous cultivation of the physical and mental powers, by a copartnership of the schoolroom and the workshop, the laboratory, and the kitchen, performing for mankind its high and legitimate office. The Board has upon it weighty responsibilities and arduous labors, not the least of which are to be found in exciting the attention of parents generally in the public school, of enlightening their minds on the subject of education, so that they will neither shun book-knowledge, lest it should unfit the child for ordinary occupations, nor estimate it by a standard, which will make it the all-engrossing good, to the exclusion of all practical experience; and in imposing such duties upon the Town committees, as will secure districts from the evils of incompetent, indolent, or self-interested Prudential committee men. Hitherto the branch of the labors of the Board, connected with the Normal Schools, has been least of all satisfactory. a The public will expect from the Board an impartial opinion of the operation of the Normal School system in their next annual Report. The system has now been a sufficiently long time at work, to give proof of its energy and vitality. The State has been liberal in its grants of money, and patient in its attendance on the experiment. If it appears to the Board, that schools are now supplied with better teachers, that the standard of qualification is more elevated, and that the teachers coming from these institutions meet with greater success, success creating for them a constant and an exhausting demand, it will be expected of them that they lay the facts before the public. If, on the contrary, it appears that the institutions, instead of supporting themselves, require an annual grant to bolster their languishing and feeble existence; if it appears that many of those, who flock there with the professed desire to become teachers, do so under the blind impulse of a popular enthusiasm, or with the hope of thus escaping the severer requisitions of a more laborious calling, and gifted with little of ability and less of stability, at the close of the course relinquish their original design; if it appears by the unerring test of utility, selfsupport, that the system will require ample endowments at regular intervals, in order to its continuance; then it will be fatally hazardous to the Board and its high aims, not to speak out frankly, and condemn with undisguised impartiality. Can there not be issued a diploma, which shall be awarded to such as, having been thoroughly tried under a rigid system of practice, are found to be well qualified, and which shall be withheld from all others? To this there may be some objections; but in any event the sole alternative to the stigma of empiricism, and the fate of the impostor, is to be found in adopting some measures, by which the public can confidently depend on obtaining what is wanted, and what is recommended, when an application is made to the Normal Schools for a good teacher. It is thus only that the schools can acquire such a character, as shall render their continuance desirable. E. P. H. WRITINGS OF REV. WILLIAM BRADFORD HOMER, WITH A MEMOIR BY PROFESSOR PARK. A VOLUME has lately been published, containing Literary Addresses, and fourteen Pulpit Discourses, besides Abstracts and Notes on the classics, the work of quite a remarkable young clergyman, whose great promise was suddenly blighted by an early death. The Memoir prefixed to the volume by Professor Park presents a very full and interesting account of Mr. Homer's brief course. It is written in a good style, in the warm tone of affectionate friendship, and yet free from all extravagant and indiscriminate eulogy. We like particularly the absence from it, as well as from the writings of the subject of the Memoir, of all cant. It is serious, and at the same time lively. It is full of religion, and yet avoids the set phrases in which it has been usual to talk and write about religion. It gives a very engaging picture of a young man of no ordinary powers of mind, who had made very considerable attainments in literature, who inspired an unusual degree of enthusiasm during his brief ministry, and who died amidst the regrets of numerous warm friends. The volume is an offering laid upon his tomb, and is a memorial of his genius, refinement, purity, devotedness, sanctity. It adds another to the many affecting instances, which the world has had, of genius consuming itself in the blaze of its own intense flame; of a mind too fervid and too active for the body, within which it burns and struggles. "Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, - William Bradford Homer was born in Boston, January 31, 1817. "In his eleventh year he was sent to Amherst, Mass., where he spent three years as a member of Mt. Pleasant Classical Institution," and where he recommended himself to his instructers by his amiable manners and studious habits. After a year spent in Boston and another at Andover in Phillips Academy, he entered Amherst College in September, 1832. Here "he soon took the first rank in his class, which he held to the end of his collegiate course." "In the forms and syntax of Latin and Greek," says Professor Fiske, " he was more thorough than is common, even among those generally accounted good scholars. If I sometimes helped him in breaking the shell, he always seemed to find a sweeter meat than I had tasted. While he had a strong relish for poetic beauty, and possessed an imagination highly active, and truly rich in ideal pictures, he had also a striking fondness for exact thought, and for lucid order and symmetry in arrangement, and neatness and accuracy in style and performance." After graduating at Amherst, in 1836, Mr. Homer immediately entered the Theological Seminary at Andover, in order to qualify himself for the profession to which he had already dedicated his life. His biographer gives us extracts from his letters during his college life, and his residence at Andover, which are interesting, as showing the workings of a pure ambition, a generous love of excellence, and also somewhat of the morbid action that so often accompanies sensitive and gifted natures. "Feb. 18, 1837. (Junior year at Andover.) - Last Tuesday was the most miserable day I ever experienced. I arose in the morning jaded and depressed. It was the turn of the eighty-eighth Psalm to present itself to my devotional meditations, and it seemed a remarkable providence, as a more precise and accurate mirror of my own feelings could nowhere have been selected. It was no religious exercise, I frankly own; but in the solitude of my gloom, I am almost ashamed to confess it, I did pour out my soul like water over that Psalm. Such prospects of discouragement as pressed themslves upon me, I pray to be relieved from henceforth and forever. There is one dreadful thought, that at such moments comes upon my mind. I would whisper it in your ear. It is that my mind has already reached its maturity, that I shall never grow to a larger than my present intellectual stature. My developments were early, perhaps too early. I have always been beyond my years. And you know that it is no unusual phenomenon that minds too soon matured are of a stinted growth, and those who were men in boyhood become boys in manhood. I know that this is a wicked thought. It may be the conception of a diseased imagination. It undoubtedly is the offspring of a pride of intellect, rather than of that humble and submissive spirit which bows in meek resignation to the will of God. But it is a dreadful thought in itself, and in its accompaniments, when I think of the disappointment of the affectionate hopes that have been centred in me. God forgive me, if I ever think of honoring the earthly objects of my love more than the heavenly.'" - p. 38. We are glad to find that the biographer did not suppress these secret confessions, through any false idea that they might injure the reputation of his young friend with the ultra good. We have proof in the following remarks by Professor Park, that he did not prune off here and there every natural growth of Mr. Homer's character, in order to adapt it to the standard of any particular circle or sect. "It may be objected, that the secret confessions of fault which the preceding letters contain should not be exposed to the world. They would not be, if the present memoir were designed for a eulogy. They would not be, if the character of its subject needed to be glossed over and his foibles artfully concealed. But of what advantage is a biography above a fictitious tale, when but half the truth is told, and the character of a man is painted as that of an angel? The Christian philosopher objects to novels because they give false views of life, and benumb our sympathies with man as he is actually found. And what are too many of our biographies but likenesses of nothing which is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth? The true idea of a memoir is, that it shall impart the general and combined impression of its subject, that it shall give no undue prominence to his foibles, nor make a needless exposure of his uncovered sins, and shall by no means imply that a man may live selfishly among us, and be canonized when he has gone from us; that he may sin cunningly here, and only his virtues shall be rehearsed hereafter. As the love of posthumous favor is one incentive to virtue, so the fear of censure from our survivors is a dissuasive from vice."―pp. 40, 41. VOL. XXXIII. 3D S. VOL. XV. NO. I. 15 |